Welcome to the official CQUniversity Student Blog – CQUniLife. This blog follows the experiences of a diverse group of CQUniversity students from different countries, studying various programs and at various campuses throughout Australia.

To Rupee or not to Rupee

That was the question on everyone’s lips. But first our adventures at the airport….

Brisbane airport was full of excitement, nerves, and suspense as to what we were getting ourselves into. After a pep talk from Mumma K (our faithful leader), we all hopped on board the first leg of our journey. 8 hours later we landed in Singapore ready to catch up on some sleep and refresh ourselves.

Spending 18 hours in any airport – anyone would think “gee what do you do???”, but in Changi there is so much to keep you busy. We visited the butterfly garden and made a few new friends, relaxed by the koi pond, lost ourselves in the orchard and enchanted gardens and was mesmerized by the beautiful scene of the sunflower garden. After tasting the local cuisine we all turned our thoughts to the next leg of our journey and what we needed to do to prepare for this.

This is where our leading question comes into play, we were advised a few different rules in regards to taking rupee into India, some of these were:

1. We were not allowed to take ANY rupee in or out with us under any circumstance – EEK!!! (advice from travel agent).
2. We could only take up to a certain value in with us – ranged from 7500 rupee to 25000 rupee (good old google searches)
3. Currency exchange attendants told us 3 different things, one didn’t know, one said its fine to a limit of US 10000 and the third told us up to 10000 rupee and to hide the rest on our body (‘I beg your pardon?’)
4. We asked a few locals and they said no problem up to 25000 rupee…. We decided to trust the locals and chance it.

Well, it appears that even though customs ask if u have more than 25000 rupee, it wasn’t actually enforced and our worries were a waste of energy – though it did kill a good couple of hours in the airport.

We finally reached our destination and was amazed by what little we have already seen and the kindness and generosity of the locals…